TIMING: Early June
LOCATION: Conor’s flower shop
PARTIES: Conor @faunandfl0ra & Cass @magmahearts
SUMMARY: After bickering online, Cass decides to get a little payback on Conor. she immediately regrets it.
CONTENT WARNINGS: none
continue reading...
The florist sucked. Maybe not as much as the guy with the insurance and the stupid jokes, but still. He’d called Cass stinky, and she wasn’t. She washed off in the lake every day! Just because the stupid florist couldn’t smell the stuff coming from the mines didn’t mean it was Cass’s fault.
Most of the time, she tried to resist the more… chaotic impulses that came with being fae. But in this particular case? The stupid sucky florist had it coming. She could let loose, just this once. She wouldn’t actually hurt him or anything! Just his dumb flower shop. That was all.
It was easy enough to find. She still couldn’t figure out why he’d given her the name, but she was glad he had. Cass wasn’t a detective or anything, and she probably would have lost interest in the whole ordeal long before she was able to find the flower shop on her own. But the guy told her where it was, and that was good. For her. Bad for him.
Breaking in was easy. Most locks didn’t stand much of a chance against lava, and this one was no different. But once inside, she hesitated. The flowers were kind of pretty. It felt mean to burn their home just because the guy who owned it sucked.
A noise from behind her spooked Cass, and she jumped as she turned around. The magma that dripped from her hand and into the vase she stood next to wasn’t intentional… but that didn’t stop it.
-
The light sound of the front door bell could have woken Conor up on its own, but it was the red cat jumping off his bed to rush downstairs that completely got him out of bed. “God fucking damn it,” he mumbled, running his fingers against tired eyes. Reaching for his woolen cardigan, the faun took a look through the window. The street looked quiet. The street lights were out, there was nothing in sight.
He never was quiet himself, his hooves always a bit too noisy for his taste. And so, he always looked as if he was wearing 1 inch block wooden heels on his shoes. He was rather short, people never questioned it which he was grateful for.
He heard his cat’s mrrrrp of joy, and his eyebrows furrowed. That usually meant hello, from what he had observed so far. And then, there came the sound of something sizzling. What the hell was going on ? Heading down the stairs, the florist clicked his tongue quietly, hoping that would summon the cat back to his side, and turning the light on in the backroom, picked up a pair of sheers before he dared confront his company. “You need to leave, now,” was his voice always so high pitched?
—
It was a cat! Cass took a moment to stare at the creature in wonder as it approached her, making a tiny little noise that drew a gasp from her lips. She’d only ever spent time around feral cats in the past, and while some of them could be friendly if you were around them long enough, none had ever made this noise. Not upon first meeting, and certainly not to her. She shook what remained of the magma off her hands so she could lean down to touch the cats fur, cooing softly. “Hi there,” she said, rubbing its ears. They were soft. Most of the feral street cats she’d met had been matted, with patched of fur missing. This one wasn’t.
So distracted by the cat, she didn’t register the heavy footsteps until they were accompanied by a voice. Letting out a quiet squeak of surprise, she fell forward towards the voice. Just close enough to feel a fluttering in her stomach, the kind that meant — oh, no. The guy who owned the flower shop was fae?
The feeling of meeting another fae was one that was supposed to come with euphoria, but for Cass, it always came with a sharp sense of fear. Fae always figured her out right away. They looked at her and they knew, and even if she told herself she didn’t care if Flower Shop Guy liked her, she was terrified of the idea that he might tell other people, too. The cat darted away as Cass’s glamour dropped without her meaning for it to, her heart pounding in her chest. No, no, no.
—
He held one arm to his chest, his other hand holding onto sheers. There was a certain discomfort underneath his skin, in his chest, whenever fae were around. What kind of fucking fairy infested town was that? Conor came here for answers, not for the local goddamn fairy congress. Answers, he had found none so far. Fae? Quite the handful. What the actual fuck kind of dried shit ass luck was that? “You’re fucking kidding me?”
Conor wanted her out of his damn shop, whoever she was. Stepping out of the backroom, the faun looked at the flaming figure of the other fae, with, he hated to admit it, fascination. She looked like a will-o'-the-wisp had met a volcano. By her side, on the floor, one of his vases seemed to be filled with molten lava. She really meant every word of her threats, didn’t she? Sure, she must have been unaware that he lived upstairs, but who the fuck just commit arson out of sheer spite ? “What the fuck? What the…” He saw the cat climbing up on the counter and jump onto his shoulders to seek shelter. His heart was racing now in panic, in anger, his face distorted with disgust and disappointment : “You come into my house, terrorize my cat,” who still didn’t have a name, “all because we had a disagreement ? Are you fucking kidding me? You called me stinky because I tell you not to poison yourself with candles. You called me stupid, small brained. And now you wanna burn my fucking livelihood?” The faun didn’t step forward. She seemed to be made of fire, and he wasn’t a fighter. He was loud, he spoke a lot of shit, but at the end of the day, he made bouquets for a fucking living. “Just fuck off,” he shook his head.
—
The florist didn’t seem particularly excited to see her, which was a sentiment Cass guessed she could understand. She had broken into his shop, after all, had come here with the intention of causing some damage after their less than friendly online encounter. Still, the fact that he was fae and was so unhappy to come across her stung a little. It reminded her too much of her aos si back in Hawaii, of the buzz that came with being around another fae and the way it always went hand in hand with rejection.
He was looking at her and at the vase she’d filled with magma, and her heart was pounding in her chest. She wanted to lie, to say it hadn’t been her who’d done the damage even if it was obvious that that wasn’t true, but she’d never been good at lying or the less than pleasant side effects it carried along with it. “I wasn’t terrorizing your cat,” she said instead, offense clear in her tone. “And I didn’t know this was your house! Who lives where they work? That’s stupid.” Big words coming from a girl who lived in a cave. “You were being mean! And — And you said I was a liar, and I’m not. And I didn’t even mean to get lava in your stupid vases, but now I’m glad I did because you are stinky and your brain is small!”
—
“My apartment is upstairs,” Conor didn't share her outrage. This was just a fact. The shop came with an apartment above and a garden in the back. The only thing he worried about was that someone else would snatch it before he did. Eyes set on the deformed vase, he watched the lava turn black, with a near bored expression on his face. He'd never been too expressive, he knew that. He could get angry, he could raise his voice, but most of the time, things didn't feel enough to gain a reaction.
“I said that if you need to light more than one candle because your place smells, then you should consider opening a window,” these were all facts to him. He wasn’t sure why she took it as an insult, but he supposed she did, because the next thing you know, they were calling one another stinky, criticizing noses and aprons and what not. All because she asked about how many candles one should lit up. One was still the correct answer. “I was not mean, I was factual, and I don’t appreciate you saying that I have a smelly house when I absolutely do not. It’s not my fault your house smells and I was just trying to be helpful, but now you’re pouring lava in my vases and scaring my cat, and honestly scaring me too. You’re in my fucking house in the middle of the night and you’re calling me stinky and small brained and I want you to leave.” He stopped, finally, to take a breath, his eyes wide and fixated on her.
—
“Well that’s your fault, not mine.” Did the comeback make sense? No. Neither did her outrage, for that matter. He hadn’t even really done anything to her, and certainly nothing worthy of this ire. But he was rude to her, and he was fae, and maybe some small part of her ached when those two things were put together. Maybe some small part of her couldn’t help but be reminded of a childhood full of people who were supposed to love and protect her doing the opposite instead. None of that was this florist’s fault, but he was here and they weren’t so he could hold it for her, anyway.
It felt okay, anyway. The anger that burned in her chest with the same intensity as the magma that had dripped into the vase, the way it warmed her when nothing else ever seemed to. No one ever liked it when Cass got angry back in Hawaii. They always got wide eyed, like they were afraid of something. Like she was wrong for being upset that they all treated her poorly. She’d learned to swallow that anger as a result, to make herself small and easily digestible. And maybe it felt kind of good to let it out instead, even about something stupid. “You said I stink,” she replied, still furious. “And I don’t. I don’t stink! Neither does my house! I don’t even have a house, so how could it stink?”
It took her a moment, with her own anger, to register that it wasn’t really rage that was driving him. It was almost like he was afraid. And that was the realization that made Cass stop, finally. She took a step back, folded into herself like a house of cards. She’d scared his cat. She’d scared him. That wasn’t something she liked to do, wasn’t what she wanted. An apology stuck to her tongue, unable to escape from behind her teeth. Behind her, the vase cracked, leaving only the lava that had hardened inside it to take its shape instead. Cass felt similar, somehow.
—
His eyebrows furrowed. Conor knew that he didn't always make a lot of sense but she couldn't blame him for having the audacity to live where he did. She was the one trespassing with the intent to burn it all to the ground.
Sure, he shouldn’t have criticized so vehemently her candle habits but he was the sort of person that couldn’t deal with half truths. Candles were dangerous or not dangerous, but there couldn’t be an inbetween. There were a couple subjects he was willing not to be so definitive about, in terms of opinions, but that could be narrowed down to subjects he knew a lot about.
Whatever it was she was upset about, Conor didn’t feel responsible for it, but that didn’t mean he felt nothing at all, or didn’t notice the shift in her behavior. That’s when he set the cat down on the counter and approached her as quietly as his feet allowed him to. Even with the glamour, hooves would always sound like hooves. What was the point of hiding now anyway? He dropped his own disguise as well, lowering down to his knees to look at her more closely. Her appearance was the strangest thing. They looked nothing alike, but they shared this much: they looked absolutely nothing normal. “I’m a fucking goat, if anyone has to worry about smells…” He sighed, and his gaze was drawn to the vase to her side. He didn’t dare touch it yet, but even then he could see that it was quite the sight. The lava had taken a much darker color now, near obsidian. He didn’t care much for rocks, but he had to admit that it was pretty. “What do you mean you don’t have a house?” That he could relate to. He had run off when he was 14. If he had eventually found work and a roof in a farm, the months he had spent in makeshift shelters… Those clung to him like scale insects did orchids.
—-
He was walking towards her with heavy steps, the sound echoing through the flower shop. Cass barely noticed his approach, having worked herself into a tizzy with her frustration and her anger. It was only when his glamour dropped that she stopped, blinking as she looked at him. She’d never met a faun before, but she’d heard of them. Back in the aos si, she’d been taught about most types of fae despite the fact that few of the adults there wanted anything to do with her at all. She might have been a problem, but she was still fae. That meant she had to know their history, their culture, even if she didn’t particularly want to know any of it.
He looked different than she’d always imagined fauns might; it was a hard thing to conceptualize in your head without a visual reference, after all. “You don’t really smell much like a goat,” she offered him, voice quieter now. He really didn’t stink. She’d just been upset when she’d claimed he had. Of course, it was hard to tell if anyone stunk with the current state of the town. Maybe he smelled more like a goat when the rest of the town didn’t smell so strongly.
She flushed a little at his question, averting her eyes with the realization that she’d said a little too much. She had a bad habit of that, of letting her anger get the best of her and exploding in a way that she didn’t always mean. Part of the volcanic modifier of her volcanic oread status, she supposed; things built up until they erupted, and the resulting lava flow was pretty indiscriminate with what it destroyed. “I mean I don’t have a house. There’s not a lot of ways to mean that.” Dancing around the question. Very fae, very wrong. She felt a little guilty for it.
—-
Sitting down on the floor, he didn’t attempt to cross his legs, instead tucking his hands beneath his thighs. Her quiet plea brought a slight grin to his face and he nodded along. He supposed he didn’t smell so bad. She didn’t either, though the town was a different story. His shop was still mostly spared, being filled with all sorts of essences and flowers. “I suppose you don’t need to light up too many candles either,” he countered.
—
He regretted making comments about that, especially now that she was admitting to not having a place to call home. “So you’re homeless.” It was a statement, not a question. He recognized that sort of shame, even though she tried to dance her way around the facts. “I’m sorry. I know what it’s like,” he moved his hands from underneath his legs, crossing them over his chest like a blanket. It wasn’t in his habit to share details about his life, with anyone, but especially with strangers. If he probably could have reached out, given her a pat on the shoulder, Conor was never good at those things, and he just tried to look at her instead.
Part of him wondered, if just like him, she had been forced to leave her home because she looked so different from her parents. “Shit, well now I really feel bad about everything I said,” he admitted with a bitter tone.
Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. She’d met worse people, anyway. Maybe she’d even met worse goats, though she didn’t think she’d met many goats at all. But he was certainly a lot better than many of the fae she’d spoken to throughout her lifetime. None of the nymphs who’d cast her out would ever go back on something they’d said that hurt her feelings; most of them were far more prone to doubling down on it.
Sniffling a little, she lowered herself down to sit across from him, the warmth of the hardened magma from the broken vase making her feel a little more at home. “I have a cave,” she protested softly, though she knew it wasn’t the same thing. No matter how much she might insist otherwise, a cave wasn’t a home. All her life, she thought the closest she’d ever come to a home was sleeping on the floor of Kuma’s living room, and she’d ruined that. She ruined a lot of things. The broken vase beside her seemed like proof of it.
She let out a watery laugh as he said he felt bad, shrugging a shoulder. “Me, too,” she admitted. “I’m sorry I scared your cat and broke your vase. And burned the lock on your door. And told a bunch of people you stink.”
—
“A cave?” He took a moment to register what he was hearing. He’d slept under bridges, in haylofts, broken into basements to find some warmth. The Boston Area didn’t have many caves though, lest he wanted to break into Boston Common to find an eventual one. He’d never lived in a cave. That seemed a lot more hostile than the environments he’d found, though Con supposed bridges had to be the worst he’d done. It was a different time though, and people took pity or were more than happy for the cheap working hands. It wasn’t too long before he had a job on a farm, and a room in the attic.
His eyes turned toward the door. She had carved a perfect curve into the glass, where the handle and the lock used to be. “How many people did you tell that to?” Conor could change a vase, or a lock, and the cat seemed to be fine now, but convincing people that his hygiene was as good as theirs ? “We really have a fucking shitty temper, ey?” It was his turn to laugh. Yep. They certainly did. He wasn’t sure they’d properly get along just yet, but maybe they didn’t have to hate one another.
—
“In the woods,” Cass confirmed. He might not be a nymph, but maybe he’d met enough to understand what it meant. Humans found it strange that she lived where she did, like there was something wrong with it. But fae, for all their faults, should at least get it. Shouldn’t they? It was the only part of being a nymph that Cass felt she was really good at, the only part of being fae that she didn’t feel guilty for.
Following his gaze to the door, she shifted a little. She felt bad about the lock now; her method of breaking and entering was a little heavier on the breaking than most. There was no way he’d be able to get away without having the door repaired, and Cass certainly couldn’t offer to help him pay for it. “Uh…” She trailed off sheepishly. “I don’t remember. A few.” Pretty much everyone she’d had the chance to. But in her defense, she’d been pretty sure he was stinky. And he didn’t seem particularly angry about it now. Cass was good at telling when people were angry; it was a defense mechanism you picked up quickly when you were a kid living on the streets. “I guess we do,” she sighed. “But at least it’s not just me.” It was kind of comforting, the fact that his temper seemed to be a little worse than hers.
—
“The woods.” Conor didn’t understand why that was supposed to be better. He felt like she was trying to convey that. The cave wasn’t just some cave, it was in the woods. He supposed it was better than the cave being lost in the mountains, or near the sea, in a bog or a hundred feet underground… Perhaps this was all she meant. “Wouldn’t you prefer being in a house? It mustn’t be comfortable, or terribly clean,” not to bring back to the table the matter of people’s smell, but surely living in a cave didn’t offer many opportunities to take a daily shower. He’d never liked showers much. Baths were nicer, but they took too much water and he forced himself to take showers instead.
“A few? C’mon,” the faun rubbed at his forehead, grimacing as he imagined what a few people could represent. “Heh, no point telling them it’s not true,” Conor didn’t particularly care for what others’ thought of him, though he cared enough not to show anyone what he looked like, usually. “I don’t suppose you can fix my door,” he didn’t even ask. It seemed unlikely that she’d be able to do anything about the mess she had made. Conor wasn’t sure what he was gonna do about that. His insurance company was never going to believe him, and he figured it’d cost less to just replace it.
—
Her face fell as it became clear that, despite being a goat, Conor didn’t understand the inclination of living in the woods. She tried to hide her disappointment as she looked back to the hardened magma and the broken vase, rolling her eyes a little sullenly. “Oh, yeah. Let me just go to the house store and use my free house coupon.” Even if she wanted a house, she’d never be able to afford one. It was so much easier to just… not want one. It hurt less. “I like the cave. It’s not uncomfortable, and it’s cleaner than some people’s houses. There’s a stream that goes through it, and it has lots of rooms. It’s nice.” And she was able to draw power from it, but she decided to leave that part out. He’d get the wrong idea, somehow.
“You were being mean!” Cass said defensively. “What was I supposed to do?” She’d probably still tell people it wasn’t true, even though he said she didn’t have to. She felt bad about it. She didn’t know any other way to make it up to him. Looking back to the door, she shrugged sheepishly. “I can’t really unburn something, can I?” Fae magic was cool, but not that cool. You couldn’t undo something once it had been done. That was just life.
—
“There is no such thing as a house store. I mean, there is, but it’s not called a house store, and they probably would go bankrupt if there was such a thing as free house coupons,” he pressed his lips together, his eyebrows curling in worry. She knew that, right? No one could be so clueless. He followed her gaze, approaching his hand to the block of lava, carefully. It was still a bit warm. He wondered how long it would be before it was completely cold. “It looks nice, you know,” it had destroyed his door, and his vase, but he couldn’t deny this much. It looked nice.
“I was not being…” He held his hand against his stomach. Right. Lies. “I’m sorry.” He was. He should not have gotten so intense over her use of candles, but he felt as though the blame was shared here. They both had a pretty damn shitty temper, didn’t they? She had burned through his door to get into his house, and he didn’t think it too awful to call her stinky online. Still, one felt worse than the other to him. “You were not supposed to come here to try and commit arson, that’s for certain,” he pointed out. Getting back up on his feet, the faun returned to his concealed appearance as he pushed the door open, taking a look at it from the pavement. It was a goddamn mess, and now he’d have to sleep in his shop to keep people from entering. Tomorrow, he’d put a wooden plank over it and try to find someone who could replace the door for him. “I really could have done without replacing the damn door. You do know that’ll cost me a lot of money, right?” Probably not. Someone who had nothing clearly couldn’t care less about other people’s property. “That was not okay,” even if she was upset, even if he was mean to her. With a sigh, he stepped back inside. “Don’t you do that ever again,” it was in those moments you could tell he was a lot older than he appeared, and the scolding in his eyes certainly highlighted that.
—-
“That was a joke,” Cass replied, deflating a little. Jokes weren’t nearly as funny when you had to say that they were jokes to make the target audience understand them, and she was a little disappointed that hers hadn’t landed. It was a classic joke! She’d seen a variation of it in a TV show! He should be laughing right now. Glancing back to the block of hardened magma, she hummed. “It always does. People are so scared of it. They miss how pretty it is.” That was the thing about volcanoes; people got so caught up in the destruction of them that they turned them into horror stories. There were disaster movies with volcanic eruptions at the center, tragedies marked by flowing lava. People liked to turn things they didn’t understand into something sinister, but that was rarely ever the case. The volcanoes were there first. It was humans who’d built cities and civilizations around them and then screamed when they did what they were always going to do.
She was a little surprised when he apologized, though maybe she shouldn’t have been. Now that she was here, she could recognize that he was pretty reasonable. He wasn’t yelling, wasn’t calling the police, wasn’t doing a thousand different things that he probably would have been well within his rights to do. Cass shrank into herself just a little, shrugging a shoulder. “I shouldn’t have done that,” she agreed, because it was true. She’d overreacted just a little, so afraid of rejection that she’d gone to an unnecessary extreme. She shifted, following him sheepishly over to the destroyed door. It was definitely not something that could be repaired. “I’m sorry.” How much did a door cost? She couldn’t exactly offer to pay for it, and he probably knew as much; she had just admitted to living in a cave, after all. Shifting her weight between her feet, she fixed her gaze on the ground. “I promise I won’t burn your door again,” she said dutifully. It was the kind of promise that was harmless because she meant it. She had no intention of repeating what she’d done here tonight; Conor was nice. She shouldn’t have done it to begin with.
___
“Ah.” It must have been the late hour of the night.
Conor looked away from the younger fae to stare at the block of volcanic stone. “You can’t blame people for that,” he knew people would be scared of him if he showed them what he really looked like. Anything that struck them as abnormal, anything that struck him as abnormal. Conor knew he wasn’t the bravest guy around here but he wasn’t one to let people get hurt either, and Cass looked like his first words to her had wounded her. He didn’t like that. “They don’t know that we exist, and they don’t like novelty,” they sought the comfort of the roads well traveled, and he couldn’t blame them. Conor, just like them, wasn’t brave, and he too preferred to stick to the things he knew : flowers, plants, his violin, his mom, his shop, his cat that he only named 2 months after it showed up on his doorstep, out of fear that it would disappear.
“Yeah, you really shouldn’t have fucking done that,” he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to keep the door closed now, but he would have to figure something out until the next morning. It was nothing he could solve now.
She promised not to touch his door ever again and he chose to believe that. She sounded like she meant every word of it. She sounded like she meant every word she had spoken ever since she got in here. A whole lot were not pleasant, but Conor knew a lot of his words, which he also meant, had not been pleasant. They were even now, and he was ready to make a friend.